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I am Pastor at Poquonock Community Church, Congregational (CCCC) in Windsor, CT. My wife Jama and I live in Wetherfield, CT.
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This blog is my daily devotional journal. I write it because it is so easy to go for weeks without ever taking the time to be alone with God. Writing helps me develop a discipline I need.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Lord's Day Message: Kingdom Economics 101: Profit

Matthew 20:1-16Kingdom Economics 101: Profit

Introduction

Throughout the Roman Empire it began, as it had by now for
centuries, at sunrise, with the sounding of a bell.Every city, and many villages had such a
bell.Ships at sea also used the bell as
a way of marking out their day.It was
regular.It was disciplined.It was modern.In Rome, it was even considered stylish to
observe the bells.

By the time of what we now call the First Century AD, Roman
citizens of a certain social strata had begun to use the bell to demonstrate
their power and influence.These
businessmen got up early, to be sure.But they weren’t really working at much of anything.

The poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, who lived in Rome at the
time gives a somewhat cynical assessment of the schedule for a typical Roman
workday:

The first and second hours cause those involved in the
salutatio to rub shoulders,

The third sees lawyers active,

Rome extends its labors into the fifth hour,

The sixth will be a respite for the weary, the seventh, the
end of labor.

The eighth and part of the ninth hour is sufficient for the
sleek exercise rooms,

The ninth commands people to wear out couches piled up with
pillows...

Prime

What he’s talking about is this.The first bell rang at 6 in the morning, and
was called Prime, meaning “the first hour”.At that time men of influence and those who ran businesses were up and
about doing one of two things.

The first activity brought upper and lower classes together
and was a greeting ritual called the salutatio.
This ritual was the outward sign of the close bond that worked for the benefit
of both the lower class client and his upper class patron.

Take note that the word patron is derived from pater,
"father". When a client went to visit his patron at his house
early every morning, he was acknowledging his dependency on the patron and in
turn received a basket of food called a sportula or in its place. a small
payment of money. An invitation to dinner was another typical gift. For
many poor unemployed Romans, this was their only income.The father gave his people their daily
bread.

The other activity these upper class patrons might engage in
was to go to the public square or send their foremen on their behalf, and hire
day laborers, promising them either food or a coin with which they might buy
food at the end of the day.

So the first bell, prime, did not signal work so much as it
signaled organization.

Terce

The next bell, called Terce, because it signaled the third
hour of the day, rang roughly at 9 am.The actual times were relative and were based on the circuit of the
sun.The time between the beginning and
end of the day was longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, and the
bells were calculated to fit into the time between sun-up and sun-down.The 9 am bell in Rome and other large cities
was the time for convening the courts and doing public business.The time between the Salutatio at Prime and
the opening of the court at Terce didn’t leave those of the upper class much
time to do actual business, and so the upper class had become divided into two:
those who worked in politics and the law and those who were strictly
businessmen.While the businessmen
weren’t held in quite the same regard as the men of the Roman Senate, it was
they, and not the Senators who were making most of the money in the empire, and
so they were very important to the system.

Sext

After the three hours of either business or court work, the
bell rang again.This was called Sext,
and it told everyone the lunch break had finally arrived.But this wasn’t like our lunch hour today,
though if you’ve ever travelled in European countries, vestiges of the
tradition are still alive.The Spanish
speaking countries call it Siesta.It begins
with a meal, usually the large meal of the day, and because it is the heat of
the day and not a great time for work, especially in Southern Europe, everyone
goes home and takes a two to three hour nap.

None and Vespers

None, the ninth hour bell rings around 3 pm, calling
everyone back to the most productive and uninterrupted part of the day, and
finally the Vespers bell rings at 6 pm signaling that evening has arrived.

Prime… Terce… Sext… None… Vespers.

There.That’s the
typical Roman workday.

The Jews and the
Roman Workday

Because Israel and Judea were now part of the Roman Empire,
they too had adopted, or been forced to adopt, the same schedule.This discipline of the work day was very
important to the ordering of Roman society, and all of the provinces that
belonged to the Empire would follow the same schedule.

Prime… Terce… Sext… None… Vespers.

The Jews had cleverly figured out how to make the pattern
work for them.Their day began at
sundown, not at sunrise.So Vespers was
the signal for the call to evening prayers, a meal, and then sleep.Prime was a call to work, and certainly no
Jew had the time or inclination to be saluting any patron.Besides, for the Jews the only proper salute
was to God.But Jesus had called God by
a new name.Father.Pater in latin.He was to be our patron from whom we received
our daily bread.

So when Jesus taught the disciples The Lord’s Prayer, he was
really turning Roman society, Roman discipline, and Roman secularism upside
down.When you pray, Jesus said, pray
like this:“Pater noster…” “Our
Father…”At six in the morning when
you’re waiting in the public square in the half light of early dawn to see if
anyone will hire you for the day, you have a choice.You can salute every patron who comes by with
the offer of a meal and a coin or you can trust God.The bell rings.The sun rises.The workday begins.Our Patron, in heaven.You are set apart.Let your kingdom come here, in this square,
in the half light.Let your will be done
as I trust you for a job and food to feed my family.

The bell rang.The
people gathered in the square hoping for work.6 am.Prime.

The Jews also had a regular time of prayer and sacrifice at
mid-morning.In Jerusalem all work
stopped and those near enough to the temple climbed to the top of Zion and
prayed.It interrupted the work day, but
the prayer at Terce was very important to keeping their faith in order.In places where the people couldn’t get to
the Temple, and certainly at times when the Temple had fallen into disrepair,
the synagogue system had begun to take over.This time was now used for what was being called a “sacrifice of
praise,” instead of a sacrifice of animals.

Praise the
LORD!

Praise God
in his sanctuary;

praise
him in his mighty heavens!

Praise him
for his mighty deeds;

praise
him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him
with trumpet sound;

praise
him with lute and harp!

Praise him
with tambourine and dance;

praise
him with strings and pipe!

Praise him
with sounding cymbals;

praise
him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let
everything that has breath praise the LORD!

Praise the
LORD!

(Psalm 150 ESV)

The bell rang.Work
stopped.The people gathered. The people prayed.Terce.

By the time the sun was high over head, especially in
summer, workers had been hard at labor for about five hours if you include the
organizing time before they started and the mid-morning prayer break – we in
the modern world use the time to worship coffee or cigarettes instead of the
Lord.But by noon everyone was ready for
some real down time.In the Jewish world
as well as the Roman, when the None bell rang, all work ceased.Those who could, went home.Others had lunch brought to them.Still others simply sat down where they were
and rested.It was understood though,
that from the Senators in Rome to the simplest slave in the field, all work was
to be suspended until the next bell.

The bell rang.Work
stopped.The people rested.Sext.

Sometime around 3 pm, depending on the season, everyone
picked up where they had left off.

The bell rang.Work
resumed.None.The ninth hour.Jesus was crucified along with the third hour
bell.He hung on the cross beginning at
Terce and spoke most of the seven last words between then and Sext.Scripture records that the sun was darkened
in a great eclipse from Sext to None, the period of time when no work was to be
done. Even as he died, Jesus observed
the pattern of the day.And with the
None bell, at 3 pm, he died.

(pause)

The way the Roman day was balanced, the shorter afternoon
working period could easily be the most productive three hours.Workers were well rested, they were able to
get a fresh start on their projects, and there were few distractions.Those at home would now turn their attention
to producing an evening meal and preparing for evening prayer.But the worker in the field had the challenge
of finishing one set of tasks and then making sure he had everything where it
needed to be by the end of the day.The
bells were inflexible, and especially so for a Jew, because on Shabbat in
particular, all work needed to be finished by sundown.And so the pattern of the bells was helpful
and each day became as all the others; a great push to make sure you got all
your work done by the end of the day.

The bell rang.Work
stopped.The people gathered in their
homes.The people prayed and ate
together and gave thanks for God’s provision for the day that had just
begun.Remember, in a Jewish home, the
old day had ended at sundown.They were
not looking back and giving thanks for what God HAD done.They were looking ahead and giving thanks for
provision they knew would come.Sometimes they sang folk songs and psalms.Vespers.

Prime… Terce… Sext… None… Vespers.

The Parable of the
Vineyard Owner

Now turn in your Bible to Matthew, chapter 20, beginning at
verse 1.

1 “For the kingdom of
heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers
for his vineyard.

The
Landowner was observing the ritual of salutatio at Prime.It was six in the morning.

2 He agreed to pay
them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

As part of salutatio, the
landowner rightly offered each worker he hired a denarius – a coin equal in
value to the accepted rate for a day laborer throughout the empire for one day
of work.

3 “About nine in the
morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

It was 9 in
the morning.If we accept that the
people Jesus is talking about in this story are all Jews, the question we ought
to be asking is, “Why were these people standing about in the town square doing
nothing when those who cared at all would have been in the Synagogue at
prayer?”Still, there they were.The landowner makes no comment about their
absence from worship – he is absent too.

4 He told them, ‘You
also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’

5 So they went.

Notice the landowner never says
how much he will pay these workers.He
simply says he’ll make it right at the end of the day.

“He
went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same
thing.

Interestingly, in Jesus’ story,
the Landowner finds workers out in the square hoping for jobs at the beginning
of Siesta.These must have been
desperate men to continue to stand there searching for work at the time when
every job of any sort would have shut down for three hours.The ones he hired at three were probably such
poor workers thatno one had picked them
up and they had stood there all day,

6 About five in the
afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them,
‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7 “‘Because no one has
hired us,’ they answered.

“He
said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

It is only
the workers the Landowner hires at 5 pm that he asks any question of.He says what they all know is true.These are completely shiftless men who really
didn’t care to work.He says, “Why have
you been standing here all day doing nothing?But instead of judging them for their
indolence, the Landowner accepts their lame excuse, takes pity on them, shows
compassion, and hires them.He is
gracious to the end, whether they deserve it or not.Once again, he never indicates how much he
will pay them.He doesn’t even promise
to pay them fairly.He simply gives them
something to do for an hour.

8 “When evening came,
the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them
their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9 “The workers who
were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius.

Imagine their surprise.These shiftless workers had just won the
lottery.Even if we accept a more
gracious reading of the story and suggest that these were able-bodied workers
who really wanted to work and there simply wasn’t enough work for them,
which seems unlikely in the context of Jesus’ teaching, this was still a
windfall by any measure.

10 So when those came
who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also
received a denarius.

11 When they received
it, they began to grumble against the landowner.

12 ‘These who were
hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to
us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered
one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work
for a denarius?

14 Take your pay and
go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you.

Now imagine the surprise of the faithful.Here they had put in a days work and received
the promised pay.In the Jewish world
thanksgiving was for future provision, not for past compensation.They are not thrilled that God has supplied
all that they need for tomorrow.They
are grumbling because they feel cheated by today.

15 Don’t I have the
right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am
generous?’

16 “So the last will
be first, and the first will be last.”

Kingdom Profit

Here then is the question.If my purpose is to profit from my workers, why would I give them all
the same pay?The answer is that, for
the Landowner in the story and for the God we serve, profit is not marked in
dollars and cents.Kingdom Economics
101: The God we serve marks profit in souls, not in cents.And he will gather the hard working, he will
gather the irreligious, he will gather those at rest, he will gather the idle
and the indolent.The God who is Pater
Noster, God our Father will have us, as C.S. Lewis says,

“God is not proud...He will have us even though we have
shown that we prefer everything else to Him.”

The bells ring.God
is faithful.Come to Jesus at six.Come to him at nine.Come to him at three.Come to him at five.He will have you, because God counts profit
in souls.